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“Hilli-ho!  Clear away, my lads, and let’s have lots of room here!” . . . It was 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve and old Mr. Fezziwig from his high perch had ordered work to cease and summoned his young apprentices to prepare the warehouse for a party.  The scene is from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and it occurs when the Ghost of Christmas Past takes Ebenezer Scrooge back to a time when he was a young apprentice working for Fezziwig, his most admired mentor.  Dickens describes the young lads’ response to their boss’s command this way:  There was nothing they wouldn’t have cleared away, or couldn’t have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking on.  It was done in a minute.  Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a winter’s night. 

Such respect!  Had Fezziwig led the young lads to the edge of a cliff and beckoned them to jump they likely would have done so.  What was it about him?  Well, here’s what Scrooge himself said of his old boss to the Ghost:  “He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil.  Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count ’em up:  what then?  The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”

Think for a moment of someone in your own life who wielded such influence, commanded such respect – who you would jump off a cliff for.  Was it a parent, grandparent, teacher, boss?  What are some adjectives that  would describe that person’s character.  Recall if you can the “things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count ’em up. . .” 

Yet, in spite of having such an extraordinary role model as Fezziwig, old Scrooge didn’t get it.  Otherwise he would not have become such a miserable self-centered miser.  It required warnings from the ghost of his former partner, Jacob Marley, plus three other ghosts to remind him of the past, present and future of his life before he began to integrate Fezziwig’s character into his own. 

Now, think again of that someone in your life.  Have you found ways to integrate that person’s character into your own?  If you have you’ve become a great role model just like Fezziwig – and you might be surprised  who would be willing to jump off a cliff for you.

There’s a little known story from years ago about a man who lived in my hometown by the name of Elmo Barron.  Elmo was a gambler – by profession — who had a wife and daughter and as with all gamblers he was sometimes up and other times down, driving a nice new car one day and having the utilities cut off in their home the next.  One day, so I’ve been told, Elmo was walking down the street when he noticed a man sitting on his front doorstep crying.  Stopping to see what was wrong the weeping man explained to Elmo how his wife had been diagnosed with a life-threatening condition and desperately needed an operation, yet he had no money to pay for it.  Elmo told the man not to worry and that he would be back later. . . . Now we can only imagine what occurred in the meantime, except that sure enough sometime later Elmo Barron came strolling back by the man’s house handing over to him the money that would save his wife’s life. 

What is at the core of Abundant Living?   Many have asked me this question since I began writing these messages almost five years ago.  To answer it let me begin by stating what it is NOT.  It is NOT about prospering – financially or otherwise.  Neither is it about anything else one might accumulate such as knowledge, academic degrees, the number of friends we have, the good deeds we do, or the relationships we have with other people.  All are great to have and may even be positive byproducts of an abundant life, but none represent what it truly means to live abundantly.  Abundant living is NOT about anything we ever gain or attain in life.   

Neither is it about living the life of a gambler such as Elmo Barron chose to do.  But there is something to be said for his faith, and the faith every gambler has in the next hand to be dealt, so much so that Elmo was able to commit in advance to helping a man in need.  But abundant living is NOT about gambling.  Instead it is about faith, and recognizing the infinite resources and possibilities that exist within creation, provided not by a poker hand or anything of our own doing but from the One who created it.  When we can live our lives in such faith and according to that recognition we will have life and have it in abundance.  What is at the core of Abundant Living?  That’s it in a nutshell.

My grandmother’s yeast rolls were absolutely to die for, although she rarely served them other than Thanksgiving and Christmas.  And so far as I know my cousin Glenn and I are the only ones among her living descendents who have attempted to replicate them.  Problem is there’s no written recipe except for the fact that our two mothers had somehow remembered the ingredients.  The challenge, though, was with the measurements which in this case called for ten cups of flour.  Now as anyone who has ever baked yeast bread knows most recipes call for only half that amount, otherwise the dough becomes so stiff it is impossible to knead, which is exactly what happened when we first tried it.  Then we discovered the secret.  Our grandmother, you see, didn’t use a regular eight-ounce measuring cup; instead she had this small china teacup with a broken handle that she kept in her flour bin, probably about half the size of a standard cup.  Ah-ha!  So once we figured out how to measure properly Glenn and I were able to replicate our grandmother’s delicious yeast rolls with pretty darn good results – if I do say so. 

Then there’s last week’s Wall Street Journal report about French President Nicolas Sarkozy who has suggested there should be a better way of measuring prosperity, one that goes beyond mere goods and services produced, commonly known as GDP, and that it should include such factors as vacation time, health care and family relationships.  “From now on,” the Journal reports Sarkozy as saying, “France will consider well-being in addition to the classic measure of gross domestic product.”  I mention this not in any way as an endorsement of the French president or his political views, whatever they may be.  But the question he raises is a valid one:  Does the current measurement system align with the results the country is trying to attain?  If not, doesn’t it seem wise to consider other possible ways of measuring? 

The same WSJ article quotes Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz who states, “What we measure affects what we do.  If we have the wrong measures, we will strive for the wrong things.”  So how we measure things may indeed be a valid consideration for all of us – whether measuring the level of prosperity for a nation, flour for yeast rolls, or the well-being of our own lives and that of our families.  It begs the question; do our personal measurement systems align with the results we are striving to attain?  Think about it.

(Composed September 11, 2009) 

Not a breath of wind was stirring, not a single leaf rustling in the trees.  No sounds of rush hour traffic, dogs barking, even the birds weren’t singing.  Otherwise my morning started off pretty much as usual.  It was early and the first thing I did was put my jogging clothes and head out the back door with our dog Cowgirl to go for our morning run.  Through the back gate, down the alley, and into the street – then suddenly I stopped.  That’s when I noticed it – the unusual silence.  It was eerie.  Then I remembered what day it is, and so do you.  We’ll never forget, will we?     

But it was not so much the violent attacks that occurred eight years ago that I was reminded of by the quietness of the morning; rather it was what occurred for that brief period afterwards.  Remember how the world became almost silent for a while?  There were no aircraft flying, most of us remained close to home to be with our families so there was very little traffic, and if anyone spoke at all it was usually in a whisper.  It was an eerie silence, much like this morning, but a reverent one as we attempted to collect our thoughts and gather our emotions. 

I remember the urgency I felt to reach out and touch my family as if to re-affirm that they were still reachable and touchable.  Then, like most Americans, I wondered what I should do to help.  But being so far removed from the tragedy itself about all I could do at the moment was be there for my family, neighbors, and co-workers – and that was okay I suppose.  We all felt the need to take care of each other, didn’t we? 

What we experienced on 9/11 was humankind at its absolute worst and its absolute best.  We witnessed tragedy wrought by one of man’s most evil acts, yet behind that came the greatest outpouring of care and compassion that human beings can give one another. 

 It was that outpouring of human kindness that I was reminded of in the silence of the early morning, and how we are all called upon each day to care for our fellow human beings – just as we did on 9/11.  That may be the most important thing to be reminded of.

“I still miss them,” she whispered softly beneath her breath.  Had I not been standing so near to her at that very moment I would not have heard it.  But I understood.  It was during our annual Labor Day visit to West Texas that I had accompanied Tee to the cemetery where her parents and grandparents are buried when she spoke those words softly to herself just before returning to the car.  I’ve muttered them myself numerous times when I have visited the gravesites of my own parents and grandparents, which I do every chance I get.  I still miss them. 

Mother Teresa once said, “Just allow people to . . . see how you pray, to see how you lead a pure life, to see how you deal with your family, to see how much peace there is in your family.  Then you can look straight into their eyes and say, ‘This is the way.’  You speak from life, you speak from experience.” 

My grandfathers both passed away when I was a young child, and while I was close to them during those brief years my memory of them has admittedly become a bit delusional.  That is to say what I remember most vividly about my grandfathers is more about such things as how they prayed, the purity of their lives, how they dealt with their families and the peace that resided there.  I recall very little about their human flaws, frailties or failures which they surely must have had.  Yet, somehow I think perhaps that’s the way it’s supposed to be.  It is how after all these many years I can imagine looking straight into their eyes and hearing their counsel, “This is the way.” 

An email came to me the other day from a young woman searching for information about her great-grandparents.  Somehow she must have found my name on the internet as someone who once lived in the same town where they had lived.  I had in fact known her great-grandparents and responded to her by sharing a couple of stories I remembered about them.  It struck me by her enormous gratitude to my response how those two little tidbits about her great-grandparents – who she had never known – must have inspired her in the same way my grandparents, parents, and many other loved ones continue to inspire me.  And it helped me to understand at an even deeper level what my wife meant when she whispered those words the other day at the cemetery.  “I still miss them.”